• CBC has signed a three-year deal to air Toronto Raptors games – putting Canada’s only NBA team back on network television for the first time in four years. The deal with owner Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment includes up to 10 regular season games in the coming season, and up to 20 each in the 2008/09 and 2009/10 seasons. The Raptors also have deals in place with TSN, The Score and Rogers Sportsnet for 2007/08. Games also run on the team-owned Raptors NBA TV digichannel.

• The Comedy Network has taken the exclusive specialty rights to This Hour Has 22 Minutes, covering 254 episodes of the CBC series and any future seasons that may be produced.

• Toronto-based Internet broadcaster JumpTV is paying US$4.95 million for U.K.-based Cycling.tv, which holds long-term Internet rights to international cycling races including Vuelta a España (one of the three European ‘Grand Tour’ races), Paris Roubaix, Tour de Suisse, Criterium Dauphine du Libere and the Amstel Gold Race. The deal comes less than a month after JumpTV bought a Florida-based broadband sports property for US$60.25 million.

• Germany’s RTL2 has picked up the 52 x 30 cartoon Storm Hawks, following a deal with agent M4E, which represents the series for B.C.’s Nerd Corps.

• The Film Works (Such a Long Journey) has bought the film rights to The Deserter’s Tale, the book cowritten by U.S. solider Joshua Key and Lawrence Hill, following a deal with Hotchkiss and Associates on behalf of The Bukowski Agency. Key made headlines in 2005 when he sought refugee status in Canada to avoid a return trip to Iraq.